Science's Job Is To Map

There Was An Op-ed Piece In The New York Times By An Evolutionary Biologist Or Somebody - Which Was A Curious Place For The Opinion To Come From - And He Said That There's No Such Thing As A Completely Free, Uncensored Medium, That People Censor Themselves All The Time, In Deference To Hurting Other People's Feelings, Or Offending Other Groups, Or In Their Own, Not To Provoke A Fight. And You Do Self-censor Certain Things, And It's Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. That's Just The Way Human Social Interaction Works.

Maybe This Is All A Bit Of A Myth, A Willful Desire To Give Each Place Its Own Unique Aura. But Doesn't Any Collective Belief Eventually Become A Kind Of Truth? If Enough People Act As If Something Is True, Isn't It Indeed "true," Not Objectively, But In The Sense That It Will Determine How They Will Behave? The Myth Of Unique Urban Character And Unique Sensibilities In Different Cities Exists Because We Want It To Exist.

I Think Sometimes I Get Carried Away, Like I'm Speaking To An Imaginary Audience Rather Than Just Trying To Figure Something Out For Myself. Ideally, I Try To Balance That - That I'm Asking These Questions Of Myself, How Does This Work, Why Does This Happen, What's Going On Here.

A Little Touch Of Chaos And Danger Makes A City Sexy.

There's Something About Music That Encourages People To Want To Know More About The Person That Made It, And Where It Was Recorded, What Year It Was Done, What They Were Listening To, And All This Kind Of Stuff. There's Something That Invites All This Obsessive Behavior.